Thursday, January 31, 2013

Incremental Change

Metabedu Incremental Change

Ways to
change yourself, then your community and neighborhood, then the world.

graffiti by Banksy

A fundamental
concept at Metabedu is changing things through the changes you make in yourself that leads you to action. When one is educated about where one
can become empowered, one may choose to become empowered and then action and
empowerment are one in the same.

Many times we
belong to well meaning groups centered on change of some action such as
fracking, on some issue, such as who gets taxed how much or some societal
malady such as homelessness.

It is clear
that in most examples, surely the ones mentioned previously there are identifiable reasons
dis-eases exist and reasons they haven’t gone away. Many issues exist because many people allow them to
exist. Some would say they are
part of the problem if not part of the solution.

There are
pages and pages of websites about changing and listening.

I would like
to challenge you to listen to yourself, the inner being and make decisions toward change, some
incremental some perhaps more radical.

What is it
you don’t like that you participate in?
What is it you like that you can reinforce?

I once caught
myself tsk tsk tsking the grounds around a local middle school as I
entered. I made the decision I
could be part of the solution and now I pick up a piece of trash or two when
entering places; just a piece or two and not every time.

Incremental
change is not completed in a vacuum ever.
We may not see the ripple but there is a ripple internally and many
times if not always externally.

The Ripple

A few days
later at the same school I saw a child’s glove on the ground. I know my
daughter’s mom and I work hard to provide for her and to replace one glove is
to replace two. One more pair of
gloves goes into production then and all of the resources in making,
distributing and marketing those gloves. I got out of my car, picked up the
glove and hailed two students walking into the school; “are yall going into the
school,” “ yes,” they replied.
“Will you take this glove to the lost and found?” they looked at me like
I was a nut and took the glove.
Apparently they walked some distance away and threw the glove back on
the ground before entering the school because I saw it the next day. Now two ripples are set in motion. The first was my moving from “litter
police” to lost and found pariah.
The second ripple was two young people gently being confronted with a
value apparently not their own and making a decision. How many confrontations before they take the glove to the
lost and found? Maybe they never
will. Maybe next time they are
honest explaining that it is too much trouble and they are late for the
basketball game and tell me where the lost and found is. Maybe they will endure a twinge of
guilt talking to a gloveless classmate whose parents couldn’t buy another pair,
and have an epiphany about our connectedness. To be clear this is not about picking up trash and replenishing the lost and found it's about little moments of involvement that add up, really add up.

I told a colleague
about my zeal for picking up trash, it’s not that I’ve haven’t done it
before, but now I looked at what prevented me from doing it on so many
occasions. My colleague suggested
having a box of those surgeon’s gloves on hand, cause ya never know what you
are touching, comething to consider.

You may be
wondering what was going through my mind when I picked up the glove on the next
day. I didn’t pick it. I’m working on me too family.

1 comment:

Part of the trouble is "it's not my thing" - maybe the biggest block to change, incremental or otherwise. That glove isn't mine, and I don't know how it got there, so I'm not doing anything about it. I didn't put that trash there, whoever's responsible for it needs to do something about it. I have to go to work, I have to get home, I have to go to this appointment....and then on the larger scale, if somebody down the street from me gets robbed, or somebody I don't know gets attacked - it's not my thing. Maybe I have some empathy, but I don't get involved.

I find myself doing that all the time, and it's honestly embarrassing. Only way to change it? Incrementally-

Your Host

Cavana Faithwalker was born in Cleveland, Ohio. Much of his
worldview and values have been molded by his Blackness bestowed upon him in a
working class Black, urban neighborhood. He blames his packrat tendencies, the
economy in his art and poetry on being raised by an Alabama, depression baby
momma who was raised on a farm with her nine brothers and sisters. "She is
probably the reason I fight consumerism gone amuck and the overly me-ish
influence of our society," says Cavana.

His fascination with mechanical things, physics, his aesthetics,
his sense of humor and how things relate to each other comes from construction
worker dad and others.

He has a degree in public art marketing and management from
Cleveland State University. His major is composed of Urban Studies, Studio Art and Marketing.

He says his “new best friend” now is Amit Goswami a quantum
physicist turned spiritual guru and quantum activist. " I
think something is happening worldwide as far as spiritual consciousness.
For me after almost a quarter century of mainstream and somewhat
fundamentalist Christian dogma and orthodoxy, that whole thing is giving in to a new interpretation of what
the canon says and also what is myth and what is ‘reality.’

When it comes to orthodoxy and dogma I
rather like an adage attributed to Zen Buddhism, ‘when you meet the Buddha in
the road, kill the Buddha.’"

Cavana believes in congruency. “The more you can be in sync with your
authentic self the healthier you are and the more life you bring to the things
you do, yeah congruency.” He aims
at being content in life and enjoying life. His mantra is breathe in breathe out. “Through meditating when I play my didgeridoo
I may have zeroed in on the one thing that won’t change in my world view, it
may be the constancy that anchors me, the lessons in science, those
metaphysical concepts beyond the science of plant animal relationships
surrounding oxygen are powerful. A natural outcome of this mantra is thinking
win-win, big picture, and yin yang.

Perhaps when you gravitate to something or are in accord with something it was meant to be that revelations come through it.I learned to play the didjeridoo in 30 minutes, ‘circular’ breathing and how to make sounds.Many play along time without learning ‘circular breathing’ but it just seemed like the thing to do."

Cavana is a visual and performance artists, he sings and plays
didjeridu and is aiming at attaining some level of expertise at throat singing
also know as overtone singing.

Cavana was the Poet Laureate for the City of Cleveland Heights,
Ohio from 2011-2013.

"Muhammed Ali got me into poetry with his prose and antics in the
70s," Faithwalker says. "I would write prose poetry and recite
them for fellow students in high school." He won his first poetry
contest while in high school.

Today Cavana puts himself in the activist 'box'. "A lot of folks don't like labels but we are hardwired to label and pre judge. I read this sign that said activism is the rent for living on this planet, or something like that. I like that but even more so we are all activists if we become aware and congruent. We naturally care, compassion, and get involved and wear off on those that have been beat up too much to care and get involved - empowerment. When we get too beat up someone re empowers us. Romantic view I know and I try to live into it.